Knowing

I think we get confused about what it means to know God.

We are familiar with all the verses that encourage us to know God and be known by Him. We want to know Christ and the power of his rising. We shudder at the idea that He would say to us, 'depart, I never knew you.'

We talk about knowing God relationally, rather than just knowing about God. And I think that's good.

But I think we are making some mistakes in the area of knowing God . . . maybe the same mistake the folks in Nazareth made when they talked about how well they knew Jesus. There was no doubt in their minds that they knew him -- they knew he was a carpenter, and they knew his brothers and mother by name. They knew his sisters. (Mark 6)

The problem is that they were blinded by what they knew -- or thought they knew.

I wonder if we make that mistake with God too. We study, we debate, we worship -- and we become certain in our knowledge of God. We think we know who He is and what He does and what he said in scripture. We've got it nailed, so to speak.

And I think that's what blinds us.

We have it so outlined and codified and parsed, that there is no elbow room left for God to be God. We have saved the file. We have tied a bow on the package. We are done.

But our God is infinite, limitless, unbounded. Our tiny brains can't know all there is to know about Him, and so by definition, we should expect Him to surprise us. We should expect the unexpected. We should be delighted by His capacity to astound.

In Nazareth, the people were sure they knew him -- and that led to a lack of faith, and that led to fewer miracles. Our self-certain knowledge of God probably has the same result. Because we are sure we know all about God, we are blinded and can't see anything that differs from our (incomplete) understanding.

Let's vow to recognize the fact that God is beyond our human understanding. Let's watch for God to take unprecedented steps. Let's enjoy His power at work in our world; let's pray that he will indeed do more than we can imagine -- or anticipate.

Let's be careful of being so confident in what we "know."
Let's be wary of letting our self-certainty diminish our faith.